


ᗯᗴ ᒪᎥᐯᗴ ᗩǤᗩᎥᑎ

by Gem_Alawas



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Space, Atheist Converts, CAPS LOCK, Canon-Typical Violence, Colored Text, Complicated Family Tree, Dave Can't Not, F/F, F/M, Kankri Is An Ass, Karkat Swearing, M/M, Multi, Near Death Experiences, Non-Graphic Violence, Other, Overly Detailed AU, POV Karkat Vantas, Reference To Suicidal Thoughts, Slightly Eldritch Gods, Sort Of, Space Battles, Space Opera, The Beta Trolls Are All Friends, Unofficial Adoption, Will Be Added As Relevant, actually pretty minor, chosen family, cursing, mentioned temporary character death, praying, pronoun confusion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-04-07 08:00:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19080832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gem_Alawas/pseuds/Gem_Alawas
Summary: Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you should be dead.You were stranded millions of miles from the nearest planet, and slowly losing consciousness as your oxygen ran out.Then, the Gods of a religion you never believed in appeared and saved your life. Now, everything you knew is falling apart - or is it falling into place?





	1. The Knight and the Gods

They say war is hell, but you don’t really agree. Battling against the Condescending, the followers of the exiled Empress Condescension, leading a squadron of the Imperials – followers of the affectionately nicknamed Empress Coddlefish and Heiresses Kindness and Sarcasm, or your friend Feferi and her relative Meenah – it brings you a vicious satisfaction. With it, a half-remembered bloodlust in the name of the Alternian Empire in defiance of your mutant blood, despite the fact that no such thing exists or has ever existed beyond some myths you only bother with for the romance and the freaky déjà vu that befalls you, and the fact that the word culling is only used by your enemies. Now though, you fight in the honor of the Interplanetary Confederation, the Empress, and indeed the higher Council of leaders from all the planets and races currently known, and frankly you almost enjoy doing it.

But even in such a perfect system, other trolls look at you strangely for your red eyes and the reddish tint to your skin. They underestimate you, believing that a mutant can’t be as strong or as skilled or as smart as a normal troll. You, for every second of your life, have fought that with a virulence that brought you to eleven other trolls, spanning the hemospectrum right up to the young Empress Kindness herself, and their families and ancestors. Together, you joined the Imperial Army in the footsteps of your families – famed for their camaraderie and connections to the Gods you barely believe in – and there you rose as the leader of your little group, known by the masses for your ferocity in protecting your team, your planet, your cause.

The Knight, they called you in hushed tones where they thought no-one could hear, in the vein of the God known first as Time – said also to be a Knight. Your friends, too, had titles. Aradia the Maid, Tavros the Page, Sollux the Mage, Nepeta the Rogue, Kanaya the Sylph, Terezi the Seer, Vriska the Thief, Equius the Heir, Gamzee the Bard, Eridan the Prince, and Feferi the Witch. They called you messiahs, living versions of the legendary trolls who accompanied the Gods – Gods that you don’t really believe in. You led your team in bloody battles across Universe C, beating back the Condescending wherever you went, building your reputation as a leader and all of you as a team that could not be beaten, only competed with by your relatives and their human companions – The Families, called such for their supposed relations to the Gods, and the Alphas, the older counterparts to yourselves – the Betas. They said you were a juggernaut that could not be stopped, a force to break the stalemate of the war that had held for so long. They said that you held a bond (or, in the deepest of secret circles, a Bond, a Bond that could bring them back) with the lost Gods.

Fat lot of good all that did you in the end.

You had been captaining a ship, just you and your eleven friends in twelve different cruising fighters. It was supposed to be a small mission, just as much to keep the enemy on their toes and you in shape as anything, but like much of the life that never happened but wouldn’t seem to leave you be, things went wrong. Badly wrong. The Condescending ships called for backup as always, but this time they got it. This time, the Condescending knew precisely who was on the attack, and they weren’t going to let you get away again. Destroyers led by Caliborn, the right hand of the Condesce and her only equal, and his ugly-ass green battleship. You stayed behind while your friends got the hell out, because that’s what a leader does. Really, you doubt they could have gotten out without you buzzing your foes, scattering formations, screaming various insults through comms, strafing various ships as best you could, and otherwise being a highly dangerous nuisance.

The Condescending, however, had the last laugh. They didn’t kill you – under orders from Caliborn, they crippled your ship, moved it a couple hundred thousand miles and left, leaving you with no communications, no engine power, and millions or billions of miles from the closest place to land. That was twelve days ago. Food and water is running low, but more importantly, you’re running out of air. Trolls are hardier than humans, you can survive on less of it, which means your damaged oxygen tanks were less of a problem than they could have been given that you turned the airflow down as far as you could handle, but their time of not being your most pressing concern has ended. At this point, you’ve accepted it. This is how you’re going to die. You’ve tried everything you could think of, everything you could possibly do, but nothing has brought you even a little bit of a chance. If you were going to be rescued, you would already have been. Now, you’re just hanging on and waiting to die. You could just set the oxygen to slowly lower, die painlessly in your sleep, but you’ve decided to live every second you can – pretty much solely out of raw spite.

You huff and slump over, mulling whatever choices you have, even if those choices have dwindled to how to spend the next few pointless minutes so you can slip back into sleep. For some reason, you think of your relatives. Kankri, the family prick, only caring about “triggers” and “social justice”. Social justice is fine, but he takes it much too far in the opinion of literally everyone you’ve met. Your two older relatives – Signless and Catalyst. Catalyst shares your name and your exact genetics, Signless Kankri’s, though like the rest of the troll members of the Families they’ve abandoned their more conventional names in favor of mighty-sounding titles. You distanced yourself from the idea of the Gods, but most of your family embraced them. Catalyst claims to have met one of them – specifically Breath – once, but you doubt it. You don’t think he’s lying about it, you’re just pretty sure he misinterpreted what he saw, or perhaps dreamt considering the circumstances. You think on what they might do if in your particular situation. Kankri would probably either pray to the Gods or throw a damn tantrum. Your older relatives would almost definitely pray.

In better times, the idea of begging the Gods for help – even if they were indisputably real – disgusted you. Now though, in the depths of both hopelessness and boredom, it seems like a fine way to kill time. You don’t exactly have many options. You kneel on the floor like Signless taught you. He never insisted you pray, believe, or even act like you cared, he asked only that you learn a couple basics, including those of prayer. He always claimed it was just in case – and here you are, putting it to use at last. You start to speak, your voice loud and grating against the near-silence.

“GODS OF UNIVERSE C. IF YOU’RE LISTENING, IF YOU’RE EVEN REAL, HEAR ME. I NEED TO GET BACK TO ALTERNIA – OR ANY CONFEDERATION PLANET I’M NOT FUCKING PICKY. I’VE GOT FRIENDS, FAMILY, AND A WAR TO FIGHT AGAINST SOME ASSHOLES WHO THINK THEY CAN JUST REINSTATE THE CONDESCENSION, WHO *YOU* SUPPOSEDLY HELPED TRASH. IF YOU’RE REALLY OUT THERE, YOU HAD BETTER NOT STAND FOR THIS SHIT. IF YOU ARE OUT THERE, JUST SITTING ON YOUR ASSES AND LETTING GOOD SOLDIERS DIE THEN – WELL – FUCK YOU, THAT’S WHAT. WHO AM I KIDDING? YOU’RE NOT LISTENING, I’M GOING TO DIE IN THIS FUCKING SHIP, THE WAR WILL GO ON, AND YOU’LL KEEP BEING NOT REAL.”

You take a deep breath. Oxygen is low, your head is starting to swim, you’re losing your coherency. You slump back into a sitting position. You’re not sure what you were thinking. The Gods don’t exist, and if they did they sure wouldn’t emerge from who-the-hell-knows years of slumber to rescue a stranded soldier, even one as respected and high-ranking as you are. You close your eyes, your ability to care draining away. Your weird meditation is, however, disturbed only seconds later. Brilliant light shines through the crystal-glass windows and every seam of the front of the ship, bright enough to tint the darkness of your closed eyes red for a brief moment before calming to something more reasonable. Your eyes flutter a bit open, then abruptly fly wide at the sight of what, exactly, is giving off the glow. Directly in front of the ship, just outside the window, is a being that offends every semblance of natural law that you’re familiar with, so unnatural that you have no hope of tearing your eyes away.

You could best describe it, perhaps, as a hurricane crammed into a shape vaguely reminiscent of a human. It is taller and larger than you, but not quite as big as you’d probably expect. Its clothes are swirling skies – not clouds though it does have those shifting across its form, blue fucking skies pulled straight from who knows where – traced with currents of wind that glow lighter blue. It has hair on its head that’s blacker than the void it floats in, shifting in the wind it generates. Its skin is so pale that it would probably be translucent if it wasn’t cloudlike and glowing from within. Its eyes – you don’t even want to try to define the blue that skewers you like a fish on a spear, like entire stars – entire universes – crushed and put into its face, pinning you in place, not quite letting you look away. The thing smiles. Moments earlier, you had accepted your death but this, this is far more frightening than death ever could be. You can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t quite even curse – then you realize what, exactly, you’re looking at.

When Catalyst described Breath to you, you remember how he spoke of a storm twisted and crammed into humanoid form, eyes that outshone stars, and a smile that could make armies drop their weapons and cry. There is, rather abruptly, no doubt in your mind. This is one of the Gods worshiped by Universe C – and they are very much real. You gape absently as it raises its hand, beckoning someone you can’t see because your eyes are so firmly trained on the literal God before you. The presence of another, however, manages to get your attention, and it’s not just one other. There are four. Four of the Ten Gods, all present here. Your head lurches as your oxygen dwindles further. One – hair of singularity, dress woven with literal stars, eyes like the fabled Green Sun – lifts its hands, but you fall unconscious before the motion is complete.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short first chapter for a big idea because I was trying out shorter chapters.
> 
> In any case, I really hope you enjoy this crazy AU - I'm certainly enjoying writing it.


	2. Tales of Awakening

When you wake up, you feel like you’ve been hit by a brick wall of disorientation. It’s a good five minutes before you’re able to sit up, gritting your teeth against the spinning of the room. It takes you a moment to realize that you can breathe better than you have in several days – you have full oxygen. Light is streaming through the…huge gap in the roof…your ship was not that broken when you passed out. Slowly rising on shaky legs, you realize you have to be on a planet as well, you know enough to tell artificial gravity from the genuine article.

You slowly start to climb out, confused as all hell. It takes some scrambling before you realize that there are others talking outside.  
“What the fuck? Who2e 2hiip ii2 that? How diid iit get here?”  
Relief hits you like a second wall to the face. You know Sollux’s voice almost too well. For all your ridiculous rivalry and pitch flirting, you couldn’t be happier to hear his ridiculous lisp.  
“HEY! SOLLUX!”  
“Holy 2hiit, KK? Youre aliive?”

A few seconds of silence pass, and some whispering, and then two thuds on the roof. More whispering, and you get impatient. You’ve been in this damn ship for almost two weeks and you want out.  
“DON’T JUST STAND THERE, ASSHOLE! HELP ME OUT HERE!”  
Laughter follows, and a second voice.  
“By the Gods, you were rig)(t! )(e’s FIN----E!”  
You laugh a bit. When you shout at them again, your voice is hoarse.  
“FEFERI! IT’S BEEN A WHILE!”

Several unintelligible shouts come from outside, and then through the roof rip drop Sollux and Aradia, both glowing with the might of psionics. Each offers you a hand, and when you take both they easily pull you out of the ship, briefly off-balance from the weight you’ve lost since you saw them last, and to a quick landing just outside, revealing that you were placed only a few hundred feet from an outpost where you guess Sollux and Feferi were. The rest of the Betas are in varying degrees of arrival, all stunned as to your state of being very much alive.

Your stomach lurches at the memory of why, exactly, you are still alive. You realize that you really need to inform your team of what brought you back. You decide that for once, you’ll actually get your friends together and tell the story a few less times than usual. Aradia turns to you immediately. You once again wonder how in the names of the Gods she’s alive. She died a couple sweeps ago, and her consciousness was transferred by Equius into an android body – but Equius failed, he knew he failed and he fell asleep, but when he awoke the transfer had been done by…something. You wonder now if one of the Gods intervened like they did with you.

“s0, h0w did y0u survive?”  
“I THINK I SHOULD EXPLAIN THIS TO EVERYONE AT ONCE. IN PRIVATE,” you respond.  
Surprisingly, the others seem willing to go along with that. Maybe it’s the sheer unlikeliness of you appearing alive and crashed just outside the compound, maybe it’s your tone, or how pale you probably are, but the team is taking this seriously. The others begin to walk back, Feferi running ahead, likely in order to grab an empty room for your little meeting. You start to follow but stagger under your own weight. Thankfully, Tavros offers a shoulder to lean on, which you grudgingly accept.

In a matter of a couple minutes, the twelve of you are seated around a rectangular conference table in a private room, yourself at the head of the table because this meeting is decidedly about you. Vriska apparently handled sending messages to your family already – they know you’re alive and are spreading the word. With that worry off your chest, you can tell the others precisely what happened to you. Getting through the story up to the point of the appearance of the Gods takes both a few minutes and a couple glasses of water, insisted upon by Kanaya and grudgingly then gratefully accepted. You tell them how you were crippled, moved, and stranded, how you held on until it seemed like you were going to die in a matter of minutes.

“THEN, ALL OF A SUDDEN, THIS BRIGHT LIGHT STARTS SHINING THROUGH THE WINDOW. I OPEN MY EYES AND THERE’S – I DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW THE FUCK TO –”  
You break off, remembering what Breath looked like. How scared you were. It would almost seem silly, the idea of you – Karkat Vantas, war leader extraordinaire – sitting there utterly immobilized by panic if you didn’t remember those blue eyes; how they pinned you to the spot, how Breath himself defied and yet personified nature so grandly. You’d barely glimpsed the others, they were mere hazes of color in your memory, and you were glad for that.

“IT – HE WAS BREATH. AND EVERY BIT AS FUCKING TERRIFYING AS CATALYST SAID. ACTUALLY, SCREW THAT, HE DIDN’T DO BREATH ANY JUSTICE. HE STARED AT ME FOR A FEW SECONDS, THEN BECKONED AND THERE WERE FOUR OF THEM. ONE OF THEM – SPACE, I THINK – DID SOMETHING BUT I PASSED OUT. WHEN I WOKE UP, I WAS HERE. THE GODS ARE REAL, AND THEY’RE FUCKING *AWAKE*.”

You took a deep breath, somewhat tired from all the explaining. All eleven of the others wore similar, stunned expressions. They all knew that you’d never believed in the Gods, and that you didn’t think much of the idea of them. They knew that if you said that the Gods were real, you very well fucking meant it.  
“I DON’T KNOW WHY, BUT THEY RESCUED ME AND BROUGHT ME BACK HERE.”

Silence, cold and fearful, follows your words. For a long moment, no troll in the room speaks, your words weighing on their chests and crushing theirs, as Breath’s presence crushed yours. Your declaration of the Gods’ return evinces the instinctual fear that lurks in every being raised on words of the Gods – that is, practically every sentient in the universe. It is not a fear borne of tales of evil, but instead borne of their power: nothing capable of creating an entire universe could refrain from leaving a trail of fear in its wake, no matter how good nor kind it is.

Even you, a devout atheist up to the very second you clapped eyes on a being you knew to be a God, felt a twinge of that fear when you heard tales of them. A fear that comes of knowing that there is something out there capable of smiting you and everyone and everything you’ve ever known from existence, something that could end billions of lives with only slight strain, even if you know they never would – and there are ten of them.

Feferi is the first to break the silence. She looks at Sollux, her normally dark gray skin unusually pale.  
“Sollux, I t)(ink it’s past time we tell t)(e rest about w)(at we’ve been working on. It’s suddenly rat)(er R-EL-EVANT.”  
Sollux gives a serious nod, oddly calm among the collective of frightened trolls.

“FF and ii have been workiing on 2omethiing wiith the Famiiliies. There2 been a lot more actiiviity recently around the God2, 2o weve been tryiing two fiind out what i2 happeniing. Not much luck 2o far, but we gathered that theyve been protectiing u2, never obviiou2ly but defiiniitely there. The Famiiliies have notiiced iit more, becau2e they get iin more trouble.”  
He grins a little at the mention of your superior record, and Eridan smacks the table and grins by way of cheering without actually interrupting.  
“But thii2 ii2 by far the biige2t thiing theyve done two date. Before, iit wa2 all thiing2 they couldve done whiile a2leep, whiich ii2 what we a22umed. Thii2…change2 thiings. Iif theyre awake they…who know2. Well need two keep our eye2 out for anythiing 2trange.”

He slumps into his chair. Eridan fidgets, and then speaks up.  
“Wwait. Wwe knoww nothin about wwhy the Gods rescued Kar? And all wwe can do is wwait and wwatch until somethin else happens?”  
Feferi nods.  
“I’m afraid t)(ere isn’t much we CAN do. T)(e Gods will do w)(atever t)(ey want and we just )(ave to wait and see. W)(o knows? Maybe t)(ey’ll )(---ELP us. Maybe t)(ey’ll go back to sleep. I don’t t)(ink t)(ey’ll )(urt us t)(ough, not after t)(ey R-ESCU-ED Karkat! T)(e only t)(ing we can do for now is tell t)(e ot)(ers w)(at )(appened.”

Eridan grumbles, but subsides. You know he hates not being able to just handle things as they come – so do you, and frankly so do most of the twelve of you. Even calm Aradia looks unsettled and frustrated. You sympathize, even if you feel more tired than angry for once. They just had a huge bomb dropped on them, and then told that for now all they could do about it was relay it to others – who also really can’t do much. You doubt that even the Sprites, for all their connections to the Gods, will be able to actually do anything with the information.

“:33 < Well i think this could be a good thing! The Gods did rescue Karkat so maybe they want to help! This could be really big! If the Gods fight the Condescending with us…well nothing like that has ever happened befur!”  
You hate to crush Nepeta’s excitement, but you decide to put voice to your thoughts.  
“I DON’T THINK THAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN. THE GODS HAVE NEVER DONE ANYTHING OR HELPED ANYONE IN THE PAST, WHY WOULD THEY START NOW?”  
“Actually, that2 not entiirely true.”  
You glance at Sollux.

“IT ISN’T? WHAT EXACTLY HAVE THE GODS DONE?”  
“Well, theyve done plenty of miinor thiing2. Diifiicult thiing2 two trace, but FF and ii managed. Theyve been actiing behiind the 2cene2 for a whiile now. A2 ii mentiioned, theyve been supportiing the Famiiliie2 for 2ome tiime. We diidnt 2ay anythiing two them or you all becau2e no-one wa2 certaiin, but thi2 pretty much 2ettle2 it, whiich mean2 Kankri the-God2-hate-people-who-triiger Vanta2 wa2 probably wrong. That guy can 2uck iit.”  
“KANKRI KNEW ABOUT THIS?”

If your asshole broodmate was told about this before you were, you are going to kick someone’s ass as soon as you can walk in a straight line.  
“No, but he 2u2spected 2omethiing wa2 up becau2e he 2noop2 on peoples priivate bu2ine22, and al2o refu2ed two beliieve iit.”  
“TYPICAL,” you huff, and then Feferi interjects.  
“Karkat, t)(ere is actually somet)(ing you could do about t)(is situation.”  
You whip around to look at her.

“THERE IS? WHAT?”  
She smiles as she responds, every bit loud as you generally speak,  
“TAK-E A W-E-EK OFF. And t)(at’s an ORD-ER. You need to rest!”  
You blink, not having expected that. You immediately and instinctively bristle, but quickly calm. She has a point. You despise being idle – you always feel helpless when you’re not doing things – but even your belligerent self gets that at this point, you need time to recover. Spending that much time in the cold, with low oxygen, little food, and little water isn’t at all healthy. It’s in your interest to take a week to recoup. Before you can voice your begrudging agreement though, Kanaya is speaking, no doubt assuming you will argue. In her defense, you pretty much always do.

“I Agree With Feferi. Karkat, No Offense But You Really Do Look Like You Need Time To Recover. May I Remind You That You Spent Almost Two Weeks Drifting In Space?”  
“ACTUALLY, YOU’RE RIGHT. I’M FUCKING PISSED ABOUT IT, BUT I CAN BARELY WALK.”  
Silence falls around the table again until Equius chips in,  
“D --> Wow. Karkat actually listened without arguing.”  
“WOW, THANKS, FUCK YOU TOO,” you answer on principle.

Quiet laughter choruses around the table, and the meeting is soon wrapped up. True to your admission, you don’t fight being sent back to Alternia to rest for a week, and all you do is grumble a bit about being sent in for a thorough medical exam. You kind of feel sorry for the Jadebloods charged with examining you. Apparently, you’re carrying several kinds of radiation – including one or two that hasn’t been seen, and they even call the Empress’s scientists to tell them about this harmless but interesting residual charge you’re carrying. In addition to that, apparently there are several things that really should have killed you but didn’t for reasons they can’t understand.

You know why, and you know what force apparently left its invisible mark on you, but you can’t really explain to them that you met Breath and he rescued you from certain death, so you play dumb.  
You lose count of how many times you say some variation of the words “I DON’T KNOW.”  
After that, you head home to rest. Naturally, this doesn’t go as planned. You stroll into the living room of your hive and a stranger is standing there.  
“WHAT THE FUCK?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The dialogue was intensely fun to write. Quirks are going to get me at some point, but I like them.


	3. Red Liaison

There is a person dressed in bright red and dark shades leaning against your wall. Something about him – several things, as you think of it – almost violently throw you off-balance, even setting aside the fact that he somehow ended up in your hive with no sign of a break-in. First of all, he’s dressed in red. It’s bright, it’s obnoxious, and the sight of someone so brazenly wearing such a maligned – if not dangerous like some weird old instinct of yours insists – color still throws you. He’s human as well, pale skin and hair stark against the dark colors your hive is covered in. He looks as calm as if he were in his own home rather than facing down an armed and highly dangerous troll general. His eyes are hidden behind a dark pair of shades, but they emit a suspicious – and somehow familiar – crimson glow. Besides or possibly because of all that, he also strikes you as highly attractive, which is ridiculously stupid.

He seems somehow wrong in your hive – he doesn’t belong there, obviously, but more than that something seems distinctly wrong about him. Perhaps it’s the oddly soothing sense of familiarity that he exudes. It’s enough that you don’t draw a weapon, but not enough that you don’t question the stranger in your hive. You follow up on your initial reaction with a non-rhetorical question or two.  
“WHO THE FUCK *ARE* YOU? HOW THE FUCK DID YOU GET IN *HERE*?”  
He doesn’t speak for a moment, just smirks very slightly, and a shudder runs through you. That smile is far too familiar for your liking – and conflicting impressions race through your head. Fear, a vestige of the feeling of being paralyzed that you felt when you locked eyes with Breath himself – but also a warm sort of annoyance, that of a long friendship or even more. It gets to you, to the point where you don’t yell at him before he does get around to speaking.

“sup karkat. been a while.”  
“HOW DO YOU KNOW ME?”  
He shrugs smoothly, unbothered by your threatening tone. This might be because you’re several pounds under your usual, hunched over, and to top it off your famous yell is oddly quiet and hoarse. Even given that though, if he knows who you are he should still take you seriously if he values his health or his eardrums.  
“lets be real kat, who doesnt know you.”  
“FINE, POINT MADE, I’M FAMOUS BUT THAT DOES NOT GIVE YOU ANY FUCKING RIGHT TO COME *UNINVITED* INTO MY *HIVE* AND CALL ME ‘KAT’! WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU AND WHY ARE YOU IN HERE?”  
“well, you wanted answers about the gods. why you were rescued and all that shit.”  
You literally don’t know how to handle that. No-one knows about that, unless there was somehow a spy or a bug on an outpost only occupied by Feferi and Sollux, and Sollux somehow didn’t catch the fuck out of them.

For once in your life, you stammer: “WHA- HOW-“  
“-do i know?”  
"I'D BE IMPRESSED THAT YOU FINISHED THAT SENTENCE IF IT WEREN'T BLATANTLY OBVIOUS, YOU NOOK-SUCKING, UNWANTED-HIVE-VISITING ASSHOLE!" You yell, your voice rising in pitch as well as volume along with your rapidly-mounting anger.  
To your indignant surprise, he starts laughing, leaning over a bit as he chuckles. This man, you decide, has no sense of self-preservation or respect. The only reason you haven’t taken action beyond yelling at him is that you want to know how the fuck he knows you got rescued by the Gods, and how that connects to why he’s here. Shit, you’re looking at this like a twist in one of your romance novels, which is not helpful because although he’s awfully attractive and incredibly infuriating, there is no way you will flirt with him in any quadrant.  
When he’s gotten his quiet laughter under control, he says something that – surprise sur-fucking-prise, makes no sense.

"holy shit i cant believe how much ive missed your ridiculous insults man.”  
“WHAT THE FUCK?” is about all you have to say to that.  
He seemingly becomes serious again, though his facial expression barely changes.  
“you wouldnt remember but we knew each other pretty damn well a long time ago,” he says, his voice eerily soft and almost sad. Fuck, now you want to pity him. Sometimes you hate how you crush on others and then can’t decide what quadrant you want them in.  
“WHAT, WHEN WE WERE WIGGLERS? I SURE AS FUCK DON’T REMEMBER YOU.”  
“heh. no. well before that karkat,” he says. “before this universe existed actually,” he adds, gesturing about at the room. You’ve decided. He’s insane.  
“YOU’RE INSANE,” you hiss, for the sake of making your point. “I DIDN’T FUCKING *EXIST* BACK THEN AND NEITHER DID YOU!”

“who says?” he smiles wider this time, shifting his shades on his face and oh fuck his eyes really are glowing and – the room changes – no, not the room, he changed, you changed. You’re flat on your ass, back against the closed door. Towering over you, somehow taking up almost the entire room, is not a human. For starters, humans don’t tend to be somewhere between eight and nine feet tall. Their eyes don’t glow like crimson stars behind void-black sunglasses. Their skin isn’t silver-tinted white nor does it have robotic seams on it, their hair is generally not pure blinding white with metallic bits. Their veins don’t glow pale red, nor do they pulse along with the seconds. They aren’t announced by the faint sound of ticking like some sort of fanfare. Their mouths don’t almost vanish into their faces unless you look closely. They certainly aren’t orbited by metal gears that hang suspended in the air, nor do they have gears partly within them, erupting from their skin, passing through their bodies as though nothing is there.

They generally don’t dress in deep bloody red with a glowing gear on their chest that looks like it shouldn’t fit on the planet, much less in less than a foot diameter; or in a billowing cape that billows about regardless of the still air, nearly touching the innermost gear as it impossibly contracts and expands to get nearer and farther from him as he looks at you. Their clothing doesn’t vaguely glow, nor shift slightly in appearance when you tilt your head. They don’t cast shadows tinted like drying blood, and they sure as fuck can’t float like he’s doing. He, like Breath, doesn’t fit into the laws of physics as you know them. He doesn’t terrify you quite as much though – maybe it’s that you already spoke to him, maybe it’s that he quit smiling when he shifted, maybe it’s because you can’t look directly into his brilliant eyes.  
He lands and steps closer to you almost delicately, gears passing through nearby objects like they’re not real and he crouches to meet you at something near eye level. Somehow, despite his crushing presence, you recover your voice.

“YOU’RE…TIME.” You croak, pushing yourself back a little against the door, which is pretty pointless because there’s exactly jack fucking nowhere to go. Even if there was, it really wouldn’t matter. He nods.  
“right in one but thats not my actual name,” he responds. His barely-visible mouth doesn’t move when he speaks, which is creepy as hell but you handle it fine.  
“WHAT THE HELL *IS* YOUR NAME THEN?” You challenge, amazed at your own brass. Few know that the Gods even have longer titles, let alone what those are. Their names? Forget about it. There’s no fucking way you’ll get that answer. Hell, you’ll be lucky if he doesn’t smite you for asking, despite the fact that these Gods aren’t really known for that.  
“dave strider. names unremarkable but cool as fuck.”  
Or he’ll just. Answer you directly. With a perfectly normal human name and a half-smile that doesn’t freak you out as much as all the logic that ever existed says it should because by the Empress the way his face moves when it does shouldn’t exist. That’s a thing that could happen.

“DAVE STRIDER? NOT THAT COOL OF A NAME.” You blurt out. Oh Gods you and your big mouth are going to get you killed. Or apparently laughed at, because Time – or Dave, you guess – sits back and laughs. It should horrify you, but it doesn’t.  
“thats what you said the first time too. fucking priceless.”  
Your brain circles back around to this particular revelation on the pile of things that have been thrown at you. One of the Gods knows you, a sworn atheist, personally. You feel like there’s an irony to that, but you also really aren’t in any kind of mood to appreciate it.  
“THE FIRST TIME?”  
He nods. “as i was explaining before you called me insane-“ you wince to yourself, there’s no way that could end well, “-we knew each other before this universe was made. not this you because of complicated shit but.” He pauses, as if searching for a phrase.

“you- well some things and people dont change much. they stay the same even when they die or get cloned or whatever the hell else. youre one of those man you died when we went through the door but youre back and the same nubby horned asshole i remember.”  
He finishes that with an oddly fond smile as though “nubby horned asshole” is meant to be a compliment and you’re not sure if you understand more or less than you did when he started talking. You stare awkwardly. You’re fucking exhausted and this is the second of the Gods you’ve met in twenty-four hours. Most trolls, you think, would be ridiculously honored to be in his presence, much more so to hear something like that. You just have a headache and want to sleep.  
You don’t know whether Time notices or he just decides to leave, but either way he shifts, reaching out and patting your shoulder like it’s the most normal fucking thing on the planet, saying “sleep dude youre like passing out on the floor.”

He’s gone in a red flash and a warp of space, and you’re left staring at absolutely nothing, back against the door, trying not to think about the fact that his hand was warm and whether that qualified as a shooshpap or the weirdly nice smile he had or his way of being absolutely infuriating. To you, those thoughts about this particular being are all kinds of wrong, for many reasons and on many levels – but put most simply, he is a God and you are a troll. There is no way anything could ever come of whatever the hell you’re feeling. Naturally, you fail miserably at keeping it from your mind when there’s little in the way of distractions. It takes you some time to reassemble your scattered brain enough to get off the floor, ready for sleep, and into your recuperacoon, and even more to fall asleep despite your bone-deep tiredness.  
You can’t get Time’s words, or his appearance, out of your head. Or Breath’s, for that matter. Your head spins with information, confusion, and tiredness alike. Eventually the uncomfortable stew of emotion and memory ebbs into sleep – though even merciful rest does not come without pitfall. You dream, a blurring slurry of drifting memories and impressions that aren’t of this life – but are definitely yours.  
A planet, glowing with lava and turning with gears, about the size of an Earth watermelon, floating just above the cupped hands of Time, who is in the human form that you met him in. Your own voice asks him if that’s really “his land” and he answers yes.

“GOD,” your own voice says, “I CAN SEE WHY YOU HATED IT.”  He shrugs as he answers something you don’t remember – but bad memories seem to lurk in the shadows under his sunglasses.  
You remember another boy who reminds you of Breath punching Vriska rather violently in the face and then vanishing in a flash of blue. Somehow, you know that event is why you’re alive.  
You remember others. A girl of lavender and orange light, who spoke in almost nothing but cryptic bullshit. Kanaya, with skin that glowed like Earth’s moon, lighting up a dark room as she forged ahead. Nepeta still, broken, and lifeless on the ground, olive blood everywhere. The Gods, definitely them but…not, instead all too human – all too prone to death with their fragile bodies and candy-red blood. More, dozens more, hundreds more memories that blur and spin together until you can’t disentangle them in the least. Red eyes, the same color as that blood, gazing into yours, only mere inches separating your yellow ones from them, is the impression that lingers strongest when you wake.

That day passes uneventfully, as do the next two. The only break in the oddly comforting monotony of watching movies and not thinking about what happened – you haven’t even told a single soul of Time’s visit – are your dreams, which only intensify and get more confusing as the days go by. Scrolling through memos on Trollian reveals that you aren’t the only one having these nightly onslaughts, though they seem to be less intense for the others. No-one else, as of yet, has connected it to the Gods. They, unlike you, have no reason to. On the fourth day, however, your quiet is shattered by your ringing palmhusk. It’s not normal for anyone to call you, you’re usually just trolled when someone needs or wants to speak with you, so you decide this must be a monumental matter. Whether it is of monumental importance or monumental stupidity is the question that will soon be answered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even in the soon-to-be Rarepair Hell Fic, Davekat is a thing that is happening.


End file.
